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Which 3D Rendering Package Do You Recommend?
"The packages that have been recommended to me for having really good quality rendering (I'm looking for something that can generate photorealistic images) and good modeling tools are Lightwave 7.5, Maya Complete 4.5, ElectricImage Universe 5, and Cinema 4D. There are lots of other apps out there but these are the ones that have been suggested. There's a pretty wide range of prices among those 4 apps, but at least for now I'm mostly setting price aside in my comparison, especially since the cost of learning an app is so astronomical that I'd rather just do it once.
So far what I've determined is as follows:
I haven't tried Lightwave yet (there's a demo in the mail), but lots of people seem to think it's good. I've been told -- and images I've seen on the Web bear this out -- that it's got a really good rendering engine, and sounds like it might be able to keep up with Maya on everything except animation, and it less expensive. It got Macworld's Editor's Choice award last year for version 7b. (The latest is 7.5.)
Some say that Maya is the top of the line. I'm not sure, and I don't think everyone agrees on it. With the inclusion of a rendering plug-in called Mental Ray with the latest version, its rendering engine is supposedly now as good as Lightwave's (it wasn't before). It was a runner-up in the Editor's Choice awards last year for v3.5. However, a number of the problems people had (both Macworld and others) with earlier versions have been addressed in the current v4.5. I played around with the demo version of Maya and liked its UI: it uses OS X standard widgets, which I appreciate, and its tutorials were well-designed and got me going quickly.
A lot of people seem to like ElectricImage Universe, and there is a version from a place called DVGarage that's stripped down and only $200, though I don't know what's missing. Fans say it's really intuitive, though that wasn't my experience downloading the demo. It's made up of several programs for the different pieces of the process (Lightwave is apparently the same way), and I wasn't really sure where to start. I also didn't like the modeling environment as much, though Universe users tell me that some of my problems (such as objects turning into boxes while you rotate the scene) can be solved by changing preferences. But I was unimpressed with the included tutorials: The task of creating a simple scene and rendering it is not something I've been able to figure out how to do, either through the tutorials or through experimentation. That said, it's worth noting that initial ease of use for such advanced tools is less important than ease and speed of use for experienced users. Even so, Maya, which is clearly no slouch in terms of being for advanced users, just seemed easier to figure out. The images I see on the Web (and there are fewer than I find for some of the other apps) seem less photorealistic overall than for some of the other apps, but again that's hardly a scientific method of evaluation.
Maxon Cinema 4D was also a 2001 Editor's Choice runner-up (v7.1; the current version is 8). It uses OS X-standard widgets for its UI. Beyond that I know little about it and have received the least amount of info from forums and Web searches. I've just downloaded the demo and will see what I can learn from that. The Web galleries I've looked at have contained some fairly photorealistic images, though Lightwave's still seem a bit more impressive to me, for what it's worth. I'm hoping someone can shed some light on this app especially. There are two levels: A cheaper version with some features missing, and a more expensive one (and actually an even higher-end option than that that I probably don't need to consider). It looks from Maxon's site like for photorealistic rendering the more expensive (XL) version is necessary, but I wouldn't swear to it.
And that's what I know so far. Beyond the big "Which is best?" question, a lot of questions remain. What's the best renderer? How different is the best app from the worst? What are the differences in modeling tools? Some of these apps have curved surfaces called NURBS, which seems to be a standard technology. Others have their own variants or substitutes. I don't really know what difference that makes. Maya has a neat tool that lets you sculpt a surface like clay, smoothly pushing and pulling at it to make organic objects like faces; I don't know what equivalents exist in the other apps. Ultimately, I'm definitely interested in animation but more interested in a wide array of modeling tools and top-notch rendering. Decent speed, ease of use, good docs, and ideally some OS X UI compliance would be good too.
Anyway, I'm going to continue investigating. I'm posting this partly to share what information I do have, and mostly to get discussion going that might shed some more light on this subject for people who, like me, want to get into this but can't afford the time and money required to do a personal, extensive comparison of all the major apps. I apologize if any of my information is inaccurate, and hope someone will correct it. Beyond that, any and all help is greatly appreciated :-)."
Download demos of the programs you are considering and play with them.
All though many "Pros" say Cinema 4D is limited, I found it perfect for me as a begginer. It interface is clean (unlike 3DSMAX, although its very powerfull). It supports radiosity, caustics and includes the many, many, shaders. Its also very affordable. I recommend you try it.
Microsoft Excel. When your 3D rendering needs require an absolutely positively... something something.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Maya. No question. It's especially cheap these days too.
I tried Blender, and at least the Mac version is just too buggy and slow at this point. In addition the renderer doesn't seem quite as good as some of the commercial ones out there. There are other free apps but I have to wonder if like Blender, they won't quite stack up to the big boys in terms of UI, features, and render quality.
Read the fucking summary.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Rhinoceros
It depends on what you are using it for. I mean if you are doing 3d modeling of a house, then AutoCAD is probably your best bet. If you are doing a model of an internal combustion engine, mechanical desktop is a good choice. If you are making characters for say a video game, character studio or 3d studio max (the newest version) is excellent. It's also good for making short scenes and animating things. Bryce, while it's interface is really crummy is amazing at texturing and terrain. If you want to draw a giant landscape bryce is where it's at. Maya is a very high quality all around awesome program. It's what they teach the film + animation majors at my school.
I don't have much experience with some of the other tools available, but they all have their uses. Pretty much depending on what type of project you are looking to do, what level of detail you are trying to achieve, whether you need to animate or not, and your personal preferences all determine which which one will be best for you.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
to do with the software, but most high end 3d stuff costs an arm and a leg.
One reasonably priced well spoken of modeller you didn't mention is Rhino.
Maya is nice, but if you aren't animating you're only using a very small portion of its abilities.
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I have taken a look at a few 3D Applications and found Carrara Studio 2 to be very nicely usable. It doesn't comply with Aqua but that's not a problem: it uses kind of a fullscreen UI which is extremely nice to use and doesn't interfere with your screen resolution.
If you can't get far enough with Carrara, give Cinema 4D a try.
Links:
http://www.eovia.com (Carrara)
http://www.maxon.de (Cinema 4D)
We are all individualists!
Or, you could just buy a commercial rendering package
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I have 3D studio max and it is very powerful. However, it is also very expensive and very very difficult to learn. I don't recommend it for the weak of heart.
I also have Poser to do human and animal posing, and this program is great. It is easy to use and intuitive. For doing animation of 3d human models it is perfect.
God Im ashamed to be a mod at this moment. Check the link and then mod appropriately you lazy FUCKS.
I use Cinema 4D DL and find it wonderful. Easier to use that Lightwave or 3D Studio Max, renders look great. I do broadast logos with it and find the intergration with After Effects 5.5 totally bitchin'!!! I am looking for Blender to improve. It needs a raytrace engine and better control of 3D objectas during animation. No that it is open source I can't wait for the upgrades.
There are 3 main packages 3dsmax, maya, and lightwave. Then a bunch of others such as electic image, houdini, bryce, blender etc...
Each of these packages take thier own methodology in interface and content creation.
The best one i found is 3dsMAX its powerful yet easy to use. Not to metion a standard in the industry.
Maya is much more confusing.. but it allows so much more custimization. If money is an issue, this is cheaper than 3dsmax.
I havent used lightwave much.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
You're question, unfortunately, will spawn a bunch of personal opinions and elitist responses.
I've been using Discreet's 3dstudio max since it was a DOS app (then autodesk's 3ds studio made by the Yost group). I've been teaching it since Max r1 came around. I find it interesting that your question doesn't mention it.
Obviously I'm a big fan of it. I highly recommend it - it is very easy to use, has plently of free pluggins as well as commercial ones, open architecture for programming and scripting and its default scanline rendering engine is very fast. Some people will argue that its rendering quality is inferior to, say, Maya, but I beg to differ.
Look into it.
The only real way to choose a 3D program to use is by actually trying them out to see which you're the most comfortable with.
If you go anywhere and ask this question you'll get many different answers... some will say LightWave's interface is the easiest there is while others can't make heads or tails of it. Some won't like the modeler functions in Maya some will. Etc, etc and so forth.
What it comes down to is eash program has its own approch to 3D. What is important is finding which approch suits you the best and using that one. You can get great results out of any of these programs if you know what you're doing, but if you can't work with the interface, with the methodology behind each program, you won't be able to get that far without struggling.
So my suggest is, wait for those demo CDs and play around with everything you can. Find which one you like the best and go for that one. You won't be dissapointed!
Sweet, so in addition to having to learn how to use the program, he has to learn to fix it too.
the greatest emphasis should probably be on rendering quality, and modeling capability (as well as usability and speed).
Having to learn the source code, etc, kind of limits it's usability and speed. Sure he may tweak it so it does render faster, and is easier to use, but that could take much longer than might be worth it.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
I would go with 3D Studio Max or Maya. Maya seems to be the industry standard in Hollywood, at least that is what I have been told. Lightwave is pretty weak. I've never tried Blender
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
I'd recommend Cinema - the rendering's quick, the quality's great and the workflow is easy to pick up.
Maya's rendering is questionable and anyway it's most useful in a production team environment. Lightwave's renderer is superb but the workflow is flawed.
With Cinema you also have the modular option, so you aren't forced to buy the animation modules which you won't be using, and some of the advanced render effects are also optional.
Good luck - C
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stupid I hope you got your jollys off that
Thanks alot mods! I was listening to music and my speakers were ALL the way up.
From a pure rendering standpoint, I would suggest renderman or Mental Ray. Maya has a good renderer that has gotten a bad reputation, but it does a good job.
If you are looking for a package that does more than just render, using Maya plus plugins would be good. The downside to this is that with most of the plugins you have to redo the shaders for the renderer. This can take some work.
I would suggest looking at Maya's Personal Learning Edition to see if it can provide your needed quality. PLE is a nice, free learning edition of Maya, but it is not compatible with Maya's for purchase software. If the renderer doesn't do all that you need, look at using Weta's Liquid or Pixar's MTOR to go to renderman OR look at the MentalRay plugin.
-Tim
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
...Softimage XSI, Discreet (or whatever they call themselves this month) 3DSMax, Hash Animation Master. I always start out people new to 3D on Hash, it's cheap, full-featured, and has everything you need to learn the 3D animation trade (of which rendering is the least part), basically it kicks butt.
I've used 'em all, and personally I like the way Maya and SoftImage renderings look best, but far more important than the renderer is how good you are at lighting and texturing. If you take the time to build the material correctly and light it well, any of these tools will give you good results. Most of them are coming on, what, ten years old now?
IMO, the rendering engine comes into play when you really want photorealistic effects like global illumination or radiosity (and then only subtly), or special effects, like a plugin toon renderer...stuff you will no doubt have fun playing with, but aren't likely to impact your UI work much. Choose an interface and modeling tools you like, or spare your wallet, would be the criteria I'd recommend.
Anyone knows about Softimage? I wonder why it wasn't included in this small comparisson, I thought it was a quite advanced system?
Thank you for any information!
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you can just spend a few months trying to understand the source code so you can fix the bugs yourself and speed up performance, add new features, etc.
he hehe he he he HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... right...
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
Can't be beat in terms of price/performance. Period.
Now, if you want to be one of the "big boys" (i.e. just can't stand the thought of *not* pissing money all over the place), load up your platinum card and break off a Maya or MAX license. About a year from now, you might be producing something approaching a test render.
It's really a question of time vs. money. If you've got the cash, the 3D companies will be more than happy to take it from you. If you've got the time, send $100 to blender.org and learn Blender.
(will be marked troll because I said "pissing..." watch.)
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http://www.eovia.com/carrara/prod_tour_car.jsp
Maybe you should click the link before moderating.
I'm on my windows box using IE. You mean it doesn't work with Mozilla? My entire extended family wsa in the room and I was teaching them how to use the internet, and then i clicked on the link. My grandmother almost had a heart attack.
Also, stay away from the marketing hype and common misconceptions that one renderer is better than another...Every commercial render out there is capable of doing a good job. Each renderer has it's own personality that you must learn to work with. Some like Mental Ray or Lightwave have some easy default provided by some company like Newtech, Alias Wavefront, Avid, or even Discreet. (BTW don't be fooled by renders like Mental ray or Renderman, the true power of these renders come out when you write your own shaders - a non trivial not for novice task- and not using the defaults) Others like the Maya default render require you become more personal with how the render works to achieve the same results. It all depends on what you need to achieve your goals. There's no need to spend more money if you'll never use some of the more advanced features like micro-polygon displacement, or multi million polygon scenes.
My suggestion is it not to listen to too many people, download the demo's and see which one fit your bill. All the advice that we as a community can offer can't tell you which one will agree with your artistic/technical side most and your situation. Its all comes down to a personal choice once you've weeded out your requirements.
but that's just my 2 cents.
Go to Digital Blasphemy. There are great rendered background pictures on that page (some for free, more for the paying user) and it usually says which program has been used to create the picture.
From reading these comments it seems that each software has its advantages over the other...
Bye, Squisher
Realsoft 3D
Which has always seemed to be pretty advanced to me.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
The original question asked about 3d software for a Mac OS X system. There is no 3DS Max for OS X.
small off-subject point, but: A computer graphic design course ISN'T COMPUTER SCIENCE!!!
I'm pretty much a complete novice and I've been using Cinema 4D for about five months on and off - mainly because I got it free from the front of a magasine ; )
.
It is pretty simple (of course, I only have the simple version) and is easy to get to grips with. And it's a helluva lot cheaper than most of your other options. But . .
No particle stuff or NURBS, which kinda sucks, and the lighting can be a little soggy, but I'm entirely self taught so that may just be me. And you're right about the renderer - I haven't got photorealistic out of it yet. Then again, I do abstracts, so I'm not likely to either . . .
"If being a geek means being passionate about something, then I pity those who aren't geeks." - Pike65
Go with the POV-Ray raytracer and do what I do -- TYPE your graphics. I swear, you young punks today don't know what 3D graphics are... mutter, grumble...
Besides, it's free.
"No matter where you go, there you probably are." -- Buckaroo Heisenberg
First thing, you should be careful with your terminology.
A modeller lets you create models and scenes. A renderer turns these scenes into 2D images. A compositor lets you turn these 2D images into other 2D images, and usually also lets you assemble them into single-file animation formats. Don't expect to do any "real" 3D work without at least one of each.
It's confusing because many modellers have renderers built in. They are usually inadequate for complex jobs. (Though, in fairness, one blockbuster 100% computer animated feature film has been made using Maya's built-in renderer, so it's not exactly useless.) However, thanks to the wonders of Open Source, the modeller is now the only part you have to buy.
Here's what I suggest:
If you find yourself making money with these, you can replace and augment bits if you find them not doing what you want. (For example, replace Aqsis with RDC or PRMan and replace Cinelerra with Shake or After Effects. You can even augment Maya with Houdini or SoftImage if you feel like spending money.)
The key here is to stick with standards so you can drop in replacements into your production line.
Good luck.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
No virus, just approximately 100 windows of the goatse.cx picture, and that wav repeating 'i'm looking at gay porno'. all you have to do is go to the task manager and kill the iexplore task...
If you're interested in good looking stills, broke, and understand very high level scripting languages, you might want to look at POV-Ray. Additionally, if you're working on a Windows platform, an outstanding modeller called Moray that works with POV-Ray. The author is very responsive and makes one of the finer modellers I've worked with. POV-Ray has a deathly slow renderer though.
I've been using Strata 3D for years. It's no Maya, but it's got a fairly decent modeler and a decent ray-tracer. I like it because it's pretty straightforward to use (as opposed to, say, Blender). New versions have IK and all that junk, and the animation support is almost good. (Note that these are compared to some theoretical package that's easy to use and powerful. AFAIK, such a thing doesn't exist.) Anyway, there's a demo in their online store, try it out. (The MacOSX version doesn't have a demo yet, but 3.7 runs fine under Classic.)
They have stories of professionals and what they use. Maybe one of the stories there applies to what you want to do.
Zaon has a thread dedicated to answering this question.
There's a permanant thread to the above link from CGTalk's discussion forum to keep this subject from coming up again and again. I highly recommend visititing CGTalk to view some of the discussions and images. They have forums for the major packages, threads for posting work in progress and finished images, and it's and all around great site with many professionals.
For the Mac, if you're primarily concerned with modelling and rendering stills, I'd pick Lightwave. Lightwave does not suck, as someone has said, it has one of the nicer rendering engines out there and is quite a capable animation package. 3DS Max only runs on PC. Maya, while a superb modeller and animation package has a lousy rendering engine (although Mental Ray is now available in Beta). If you plan on using Maya with Mental Ray, I'd say this is your clear choice, otherwise, Lightwave. Electric Image has the worlds fastest phong renderer and produces very nice images, but isn't a very good modelling package. I'd recommend using Form Z with it if you go that route. Electric Image isn't a very good animation package. Hash (www.hash.com) is a very inexpense ($300) package that is geared toward character animation but is pretty good all around, although the renderer and modelling tools might not suit you. There it is, in a nutshell.
doh. use this link instead and use the keyword 3D to display the stories.
POV-Ray.
It's one of few that can actually do mathematically perfect surfaces at arbitrary resolutions without having to decompose the scene into polygons. Of course, this is because it is a raytracer and not a zbuffer-based renderer, so it isn't the fastest out there.
It doesn't have a native modeller, but many third-party modellers can export as POV scene format.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
This is Slashdot. Use The GIMP. That is all you need. For everything.
I'd be using it in Mac OS X
So, um, did any of you guys recommending 3DSMax read this part of his initial query? Um... anyway, if OS X is to be your platform, the only software you need to bother with is Cinema 4D. Get r8 and a nice openGL card (whatever the newest nVidia card Apple will sell you), and you will not be disappointed.
I've been using C4D since version 5, and have been using it in OS X since it has been possible to do so. Cinema is a wonderful piece of software: the modelling workflow puts 3DSMax to absolute shame, the animation system (while still lacking in some areas) is rapidly, and I mean rapidly catching up to the big dogs (check out this site (Mash is a C4D developer) for some really beautiful examples of the leaps and bounds r8 has made in the soft-IK department), and you simply will not find a faster renderer (as far as single workstation rendering goes--I'm sure Pixar's n-cpu PrMan farm offers serious competition).
The biggest downfalls for C4D are a lack of n-sided polys and a lackluster implementation of boolean modelling. These weaknesses, when weighed against the outrageous strengths displayed in nearly every other area, make C4D the obvious choice for Mac users. Shit, I've found the environment to be even more work-condusive than Maya's sometimes... now if only Maxon could figure a way to incorporate something like A|W's marking-menus without legally stepping on some toes...
I haven't used any of the higher end 3D apps (too pricey) but have found Carrara to be an overall nice program and a good value for the price. It has loads of nice features is fairly easy to learn, has 3D animation, keyframing, a nice renderer is OS X native (in rev 2.0) and exports to several formats that can be used in other graphic apps.
The only downside's I've found is that it's sometimes hard to produce certain kinds of precise shapes (like complex mechanical parts with many holes, odd angles and cutouts). The spiral tool produces really weird spirals and there is no workaround. Sometimes the 3D subtraction tool gets confused when you're punching holes through a shape and ends up producing strange spikey "teeth" around the hole, but this is the exception, not the rule.
I'd say that unless you have some money burning a hole in your pocket and truely see a need to jump right in to the high end apps, that Carrara might be a good bet. It does alot of things very well and it's price doesn't break the bank.
The modeler and render components are *not* exclusive.
You can use 2 different programs.
Example, blender or ayam to model, and then export to something such as BMRT or POV-RAY.
Even 'high end' pacakges, such as Rhino3D, support this sort of thing, each pushes its strong suit.
Judge each component on its own level....
You also mention it will be on MAC OS.. that
limits your options greatly.
PS: done properly, Blender's internal render engine can do amazing things.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's a ray tracer and that'll cost you. You may find you can render a cube or sphere without trouble but it's hard to efficiently ray trace something like a human figure with clothing etc. that has a few million polygons - all of which may be required at any point in the render. Mental Ray doesn't make use of some really quite cool advances in ray tracing that have been made in the last few years. For example it doesn't use Matt Pharr et al's caching techniques. It also has trouble displacement mapping - again because that requires massive tesselation which is difficult in a ray tracer. It's a trade off between realism (which is easy in a ray tracer) and efficiency (which a 'streaming' renderer like Renderman is good at).
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
The Art of Illusion 3D modeller is written in Java and runs on the Linux, Mac, and Windows platforms. (It does not currently use the Java3D interface, because that has not yet been licenced for the Mac platform.) Here's a URL:
http://www.artofillusion.org/It is under a GPL license and seems to be pretty easy to use (i.e. not nearly as confusing as Blender is to initial users.)
Your milage may vary.
-Wayne
this is not a troll morons. This was INFORMATIVE.
When moderators mod an AC +2:Informative and all it is is a popup gay porn site, he deserves a +5 Informative.
Get real.
We need some new moderation options
-1 Doesn't understand irony
-3 Stupid
Just because one can, doesn't mean one should. And really, how long would it take? It could take much longer than is worth his time to figure it out, when he could get a stable, useable product for a price. If you're too lazy to learn the code then go back to point-and-click windows.
Okay, so those who can't code or don't know what a particular piece of code means in an OS app (or don't have the time to figure it out), shouldn't use it at all?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
if you're interested in rendering landscapes (as opposed to building models and rendering those), I have to recommend MojoWorld. there's a free demo, there's also a free "Transporter" version of the program which lets you explore planets made by others.
http://www.pandromeda.com
you may also want to look in to Bryce - it's relatively inexpensive, it's possible to do some limited modeling with it (I've seen some flat out amazing stuff done w/ only Bryce's tools - but note that Bryce is not "a modeler") - however, with Corel teetering on the brink, Bryce may not be around much longer (all the more reason to look into getting an older version for cheap!)
-calyxa
Decay! Decay! Decay! -Helium
hahaha, MOD the up!!!
hear, hear
In terms of final output these days, a good artist can use any of the Major packages out there and get similar results (a renderer does not a good artist make). Maya has a rep as a high-end package, and if you are good with it you're not going to have any problems finding work. Given that you are on a Mac I'd lean towards Lightwave, it's got a great renderer built in and it's a LOT easier to learn than Maya. And for what you need it for; rendering occasional design elements and fooling around it's perfect. Lightwave is a great package that easily competes with Maya for the quality of work produced with it.
If you were on the PC I'd reccomend 3DS Max with Brazil for rendering, I've been using it since 3DS DOS v2 and although I often freelance for a shop that's mostly Softimage and Maya I've never felt the need to learn anything else. We used it for over a thousand shots a year for three years on Farscape and it's been fantastic. I'll never switch packages as long as Discreet still develop it.
Dont forget about ayam, its a free modeler that exports RIB. ( unsure about the mac-connection though )
Also there are python scripts to export Blender to RIB.
ALso, if you can find it, BMRT was a great quality RIB complient render engine. Such a same to see it gone.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ummm.. if it takes someone with no experience of 3d graphics 'a week, two at the most' to learn enough to be able to notable improve on the stability and speed then the original coders must have been severely lacking in ability.
Also I think saying someone should learn the intricacies of the code behind all the applications they use to be more than a little ridiculous, there's a reason so many people are trying to make open source programs more usable- it's so people will use them. This kind of attitude just doesn't help.
Oh, and the fact something is 'Point and click' is a good thing for most people. Just thought you'd like to know.
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3D Toolkit ( what you refer to as "DVGarage", which is the company that makes it) is the way to go for a beginner. The reason to buy it is for the training videos and content, not for the software (which is nice though)
There is not a quicker or easier way that you'll learn 3D and it applies across all the apps, not just Electric Image. But from the sounds of it, the software should be enough for you. If you're not doing animation, I don't think you should be worrying about the renderer you are using. Using a renderer with all the bells and whistles like Global Illumination or Radiosity will actualy hurt you when you show your portfolio around - if you can get those same type of effects without those features, you are much more likely to land a real production job. Real productions usually can't afford the time it takes to render with GI or even radiosity. Check out rustboy.com for an example of great 3D done with bare bones software without any cool features at all.
And I don't just mean with the modelling programs themselves. From your questions about things like NURBS, it sounds like you don't have much experience with the process of 3D modelling itself yet. (If I'm wrong, excuse my presumptuousness.)
In my experience, it's really almost impossible to judge 3D modellers until you have some experience with them and know what kinds of features you want and how you like to model. The modellers you are looking at buying are expensive enough that I would recommend you make sure you know enough about rendering that you can make your own informed decisions about what suits you.
Try starting off with something like Moonlight 3D or Blender, or using a friend's copy of 3D Studio Max or something like that, and get yourself extremely comfortable with 3D modelling, including animation-related stuff. Learn basic modelling, learn how to use NURBS, and learn how to use stuff like inverse kinematics, and make sure you are comfortable with all of them. Then, take a look at the demos you have and you will be able to tell whether one modeller's way of doing things feels more comfortable to you than another.
Otherwise, you might just find out that you've spent great heaping piles of money on a 3D modelling package that everyone on Slashdot just recommended to you based primarily on the knowledge that it's used by ILM or Pixar or what have you.
I would focus your attention on Lightwave or Maya.
Lightwave is very easy to learn, has a very good modeler (for polygons and subdivision surfaces; no NURBS though), and a good rendering engine. Lightwave works really well out of the box, you won't need any additional software at the beginning.
Maya is the most flexible of commercial 3D packages; the modeler is good for NURBS and can handle polygons and subdivision surfaces too (though not as easily as Lightwave). Maya's animation features are unparalleled. However, the renderer isn't so great. Many professional Maya users export their scenes to a RenderMan-based renderer instead of using the bundled one.
If you had to get just one package, or you don't think you'd be able to set up a renderer for Maya, I would get Lightwave. If you are mostly concerned with animation and can expect some help in the lighting and rendering departments, get Maya.
Both Lightwave and Maya skills are valuable for getting 3D animation jobs. Lightwave is slightly more concentrated in game development and TV work, while Maya is more concentrated in film and TV.
Finally, don't put too much weight in the sample images you find for each package. The Lightwave website has a huge gallery of excellent work, but you have to keep in mind it's been around for many many years, and so its users have had plenty of time to figure out how to get good results from it. A newer package might not have that many impressive sample images, simply because there isn't a large community of experienced users yet.
lightwave is my favorite
Slackware, the quicker booter-upper
Sure, Maya and Softimage are/were standards for film production, but 3D Studio has been used in a number of major motion pictures as well. There's no denying that it has found more of a home in the games industry, but that's not for want of capability. Here is a list of application fot 3dsmax which includes cinematic works.
Of course if you're talking about it from a career perspective, then yeah, for sure, Maya would be the way to go for the film industry.
If you are just modeling for games, high-end stuff isn't for you.
Me, I'm very accustomed to QME. Alas, they're not making it anymore.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Well, since you are limiting yourself to Mac, then 3D Studio Max/Viz is out.
Maya is incredibly powerfull, but equally difficult to master - great for 'organic' forms.
Blender is free...but difficult to use, and lacks support.
FormZ is very easy to use, very easy to master, and much much cheaper than Maya. It is also both Mac and Win. However, it lends itself more towards architectural work, and is useless for animation (currently only the camera path can be animated).
I would recommend 3DStudio in your shoes...but you've eliminated that option. If you aren't going to do animation, and if you are unfamiliar with working in 3D - check out FormZ (it has a free demo). But, if you are ready to jump to the big time and deal with a lot of up-front learning - go with Maya.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Hands down, Lightwave 7.5 will give you the best bang for buck. I have been using it for years, along with 3D Studio Max, Maya and a few other much older and obscure programs (anyone remember QuickSilver and Imagine on the Amiga?)
Maya is great but for Lightwave runs great under OS X, has an excellent (some say one of the best) Modellers, and the layout system is intuitive and makes a lot of sense once you get used to it (which isn't hard)
Maya. A post above mentioned Rhino as well. I would say that if you get heavy into nurbs and get up against a wall with maya, then get Rhino as well. People like to go on and aon about how bad the maya renderer is. Well, the point in now moot, because you get Mental Ray for free with maya 4.5. And mental ray is just stunning.
The best part of maya is the interface. It is not esy to learn, but once you get going you really start to wish more apps were designed for speed and efficiency rather than speed. There are some other packages that are good. But you will not be dissappoint with maya. You will love it. And for $2k its priced well for what you get, especially now it includes mental ray. Also, 4.5 rocks on os x, (3.5 really did suck) so its really the only way to, considering max and XSI (the only real competitors in my mind) aren't available on the mac. Of course, I've been doing 3d with alias software since 1994, so I'm biased. But justifiably so, I've never heard of anyone who actually prefered another package to maya (except maybe XSI, but a lot of that was mental ray). Rambling now, but I can't tell you how much I love maya. A geekier slashdotter than me can reply and tell you all about MEL and the API as well.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
If you are using MacOSX, and just getting into 3d, there is only one choice.
3dToolkit $199
goto www.dvgarage.com and check out 3dToolkit. Its Electic Image 2.9 and it includes over 2 gigs of tutorials on DVD.
Once you master that, they look at the either Universe 5.0 (newest version of Electric Image) or Cinema4d or Maya.
Give it a look, it's supposed to have one of the best character modeller's out there. Full featured, works with OS X and exports in all the major formats. Functional renderer included too, but not as strong as the modeller.
i on master02.html
http://www.hash.com
and here's a review of it
http://www.macaddict.com/issues/0210/rev.animat
Funny that this person's question was one I have been thinking about for a while. However, he didn't really say exactly what he wanted to do and ask which program was best suited for that.
I'm also a graphic designer who wants to get into 3d, but my requirements are more into creating things like product architecture diagrams, logos and technical graphics. I'd like to be able to do basic animations, but nothing much more complicated than what I can already do in 2D in Flash.
So what I'm NOT interested in is "molding" things or creating arbitrary shapes. I like numbers, coordinates and precise positioning. If anyone has reccomendations I'd be very grateful. I work on a PC.
I used to spend a lot of time on bicycles. Not racing or anything, just having fun, commuting, exploring and the like.
:
..." [insert info about bike fit here ] "...then ride it for a month or two - find out what kind of riding you like, get a feel for how you ride and then come back and we'll talk more."
Got known for it.
People would say "I want to buy a bike, whats the best one?"
I'd ask them what kind of bike they had now and how often they rode it. The answer was frequently that they did not have a bike and didn't ride. Since none of these people had millions in the bank, my answer was always about the same
"Go to a thrift store, yard sale, whatever and find a bike that fits
Why? Without knowing how someone rode or what kind of riding they might like, there is no way to tell them what kind of bike to buy. Further, even sending them to good bike shops to try bikes was a waste of time because they wouldn't be able to tell how the bike felt to them.
Of course, they could just go out to a good bike shop and spend way more than they could afford on a bike they'd never use. But that didn't feel like a good suggestion to me somehow.
Same thing here. "Renderer" and "modeller" seem to be mixed up. I get no feel that the poster knows what he's looking for.
So my advice:
Get Blender, POV (or similar free or very cheap packages) and work with them seriously for a while. Do a couple good sized projects. Figure out what you're good at and what you want to do. Get a feel for how you want the application to react and what you really want it to do.
Then, if you still need advice, you'll be able to ask for it more precisely.
And the answers will mean more.
Maya is a very high quality all around awesome program
John Carmack has mentioned Maya is what id is using to make the models for Doom3.
What's the best 3D software is like asking what is the meaning of life. It's as touchy as PC vs Mac. There is no best solution, that's why most major studios use a combination of off the shelf software usually Maya, XSI and Houdini plus a lot of proprietary code/plug-in's what have you. If you are serious about 3D you should probably start with a fairly robust program such as Maya or XSI and then you won't have to re-learn stuff, but basically 3D is 3D the paradigms differ and each has it's strengths and weaknesses. Maya is a very good modeler (nurbs, sub division surfaces etc) it's modeler has gotten a bad rap for a long time, but in the right hands it is more than adequate and now there is a Mental ray plug in for free! and Maya is just around 2K, seems like a no brainer to me. Just seven years ago Power Animator the pre cursor to Maya was 45K and only ran on a UNIX workstation (50K) and it was only a 150mh machine. Maya has a lot of cool tools however there will not be parody between PC and Mac versions for at least a year, which means no fur, cloth or fluid dynamics, really no big deal (there is a great hair plug-in: Shave and a Haircut from Joe Alter. The latest release 3.0 of XSI will really give Maya a run for the money, although it is six grand or there a bouts, it is really a fine all around modeling and animation app and has great integration with Mental Ray. Houdini is strong on particle effects and is less strong in modeling, it is procedural in nature and things can be changed and all changes are the propagated downstream. This one is not an easy learn, not for the faint of heart. It remains to be seen if Max will survive when Maya is so feature rich and now is priced less than Max. They are really not in the same league anyway IMHO. Lightwave is used a lot for TV and some broadcast as well, it has a great renderer and powerful modeling tools as well. Cinema 4D is a first class renderer and has some very good plug-in's from Cebas software , it is very fast, and if animation is not really a concern it might be a good choice. As I said this is all very subjective, try a few on for size and see what works for you, that's the bottom line. No one product will do it all. Any ways "you can never have too many toys!" Most of all have fun! ps: you might want to spend some time hanging out at http://www.highend3d.com Cheers
...know that the renderer does not a quality scene make. It doesn't matter whether you use a best of breed render or a cheasy, not-so-great render. If you're a good artist who knows how to make good use of lighting, color, layout, textures, and so forth, you will produce photorealistic work. If you're a sucky artist (as most 3D artists are) and you have this misconception that a great rendering and tool kit is going to save you... well, your work will blow.
The shittiest 3D art I've ever seen (stepping away from the whole "it's art!" idealogy) was done with Lightwave3D. Some of the best I've seen was done with Blender and Caligari trueSpace (an off the shelf package for $100 in some places).
It all comes back to the artists. The software is just a tool. If you don't know how to hammer a nail in straight, a $15,000 hammer won't help.
Why bother.
You can get the 'personal learning edition' of Maya for free from the Alias|Wavefront web site. I can't direct-link it, because Slashcode is being a jerk about the ultra long link. But it's there under "Free Downloads" on the left side.
It watermarks your renderings, if I recall correctly, but as far as I know it's otherwise fully featured. This should be enough to give you an idea of whether or not it suits the work you need to do.
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
As a UI designer, I would advise staying well away from LightWave. It has a very non-standard and unintuitive interface that would probably drive you nuts! We teach it here as part of a MultiMedia diploma and students really struggle with it. It also doesn't help that it's a real dog on the mac, under OS9 at least. 3DS Max, Maya, and Cinema4D all share quite similar interfaces now - to varying degrees, but Lightwave has almost nothing in common with them. My vote would be Maya if you've got the cash and are serious enough to take on a reasonably steep learning curve, otherwise Cinema4D, being almost as powerful (certainly if you're not doing animations), but cheaper and easier to learn.
Basically there aren't any serious options on Mac OS (9 or X). 3D has never been a strong point with the Mac. Given Apple's current push on 2d and Desktop Video, things look no better now than they did in the past. You should also consider the health of these companies. Alias/Wavefront has shed its share of employees and not that many people are left, specially on the Mac end of things. 3ds max is on its way to extinction as well as a lot of its developers have gotten the boot all the way up to upper management. Discreet seems to be going 2d only.
This is probably not immediately useful to the original poster since it's Win32 only, but OpenFX (http://www.openfx.org/about/index.php) is an easy to use GPL 3D package. It used to be called SoftFX before it was GPLed, and while the interface looks a ltiile dated, it's a very competent package. It's also in active development, including the potential to be ported to other platforms.
Though maya comes with (from my experience a great renderer) I would rather work with pixar's renderman. That way it doesnt matter what modeler you use, its top of the line, and is usualy what they use on all of the pixar movies. Maya is a great modeler and EASY to learn. They use it for almost every movie these days (Shrek, The Mummy, The Matrix). They're a bit pricey but once you have the latest version of maya youl never have to update it because it doesnt sound like all the new stuff that comes out for it is going to be necessary for you. Render man is just good no matter what version you have. So youl only have to purchase them once and never worry about updating. -p00kie
The Blade Itself
BMRT is a free (as in beer) renderer that complies with Pixar's Renderman format. Thus, if you use a modeler that can export in Renderman format, you can use BMRT for rendering. I haven't used it much, but it has been used in several major film productions.
Binaries are available for several platforms, including windows, linux and solaris.
Originally created by former Pixar employee Larry Gritz, BMRT was then integrated into a startup called Exluna that was recently bought by Nvidia. They stopped distributing BMRT, but some online resources are still available.
Now, if you're still interested in trying out the software, it is still available on the web (try searching for "BMRT2.6" using your favorite search engine)
Larry Gritz also wrote a nice book, called "Advanced Renderman", which explains quite a lot about shaders, Renderman and uses BMRT for examples.
If you're interested in finding out more about Renderman, check it out !
I don't know if anyone's even gonna see this, since this has already been modded down, but can anyone confirm that there is no virus attached to that site? Norton popped up saying that it contained the "JS.Winbomb.d" virus.. of course, Norton also said it couldn't access the file to do anything about it... some help!
.COM files.
I couldn't access the html document that was supposedly infected, though it was still sitting in my cache -- I eventually gave up trying to view the source to this to see what it contained and decided to just delete the group of files that came in from that site.
A subsequent Norton scan (2002, latest defs) found no virus.. and a trip to the sarc.com site for more info on the virus only said that it was rare and effects
I'm thinking (and hoping) that Norton just saw the script and took a best guess and was wrong...
any ideas/suggestions?
I talked to the Discreet representative at the Ottawa Animation festival. He said there's no way 3D Studio Max will be coming to Mac anytime soon because the core programming is tied to x86 architecture. He said when they do a complete rewrite they will make a Mac version.
Tea and kung-fu. Life is good. Rising Phoenix
I'd say that, having tried most of well-known 3D toolsets, the questions you should ask are:
Price
Features
Ease of Use
Future Options
Price is interesting. Quite a few free options exist, usually these are teaser products for commercial software or essentially useless rubbish.
For a fully-functional general purpose toolset you are probably looking at $2000+
Features
I think you ALWAYS want a tool with a SCRIPTING language. This eliminates ElectricImage (and a bunch of less serious contenders), but leaves you with Cinema4D, Lightwave, 3D Studio Max, and Maya. (If you're willing to pay $7500+ there's also SoftImage and Houdini etc. Let's ignore them.)
Ease of Use
Cinema4D has the least dynamic UI. A lot of stuff seems to take place in dialog boxes.
Lightwave has the least standard user interface and it also divides itself into modelling and layout programs (as does ElectricImage). While many Lightwave users don't seem to mind this, I find it very very annoying. To my mind, a model, texture, and animation setup belong in ONE place.
Max is a truly great program. I think that Maya's price drop, Lightwave's vastly improved texture support, and Cinema4D's interface enhancements have made choosing it less obvious than would have been the case two years ago. Max is worth buying a PC for (I'm a Mac user).
But with Maya's price drop, I think it's a hard pick. Maya is harder to learn, but deeper.
Future Options
3D Studio Max is Windows only, whereas the other three options are fully cross-platform (as is ElectricImage). Maya has a big daddy (Maya Unlimited -- Maya Complete isn't complete, cough). In general, qualified Maya operators EARN MORE MONEY than operators of the other programs. But that's in general. A good artist can always learn a new program.
Special Considerations
If you don't need scripting, and plan to render huge polygon-count scenes and need fast rendering then ElectricImage leaves all the other products in the dust. That's why it gets used to do stuff like blow up Los Angeles in T2, or much (all?) of the space combat in Episode 1.
If you desperately want to animate lots of human figures, and don't really need super fine control over them (e.g. crowd scenes for a splash sequence in a video game) Max's Character Studio suddenly looks good.
Integrated vs. Modular
Some people mentioned Rhino. There's also Form*Z and other specialised modellers. Some toolsets are actually modular themselves (ElectricImage and Lightwave spring to mind).
I think that there's a good reason to have an integrated toolset, EVEN IF you use specific tools for specific purposes. You might want a dedicated modeller, but in general it's very useful to have complete control of everything in one place. Sometimes an animation problem requires a modelling solution (e.g. when a limb creases badly when bent). Having to work in a different tool to deal with such problems is like having to quit your word-processor to reformat a heading...
So, you built your car? Hauled the engine in yourself?
Smelted the iron and aluminum too? Oh, you went carbon fiber and titanium? Cool.
Built your house too? What? Timber? Concrete next time man. What's that about the stone? Quit whining. You had a car. Shoulda WALKED to the quarry and pull the rocks out by hand, and drag them to the lot. Save on some energy, and get some excercise too! If you ain't doing this, how can you call yourself a man, boy. That's what you SHOULD do, anyways. You got too much time on your hands if you're coding anyways.
You think you the man still, eh? Well, bet you were LAME enough to buy the lumber instead of stripping the trees down by thumping on them with your fists. What? You used a chainsaw? Wimp. Real folks use hand tools. Lesser ones use those with the steel blades. The better folks use their freakin god-given teeth to debark and, when they went to the quarry to get their crushed stone, built their own tool implements out of the granite, to cut the lumber down.
What, you backtracking now, and didn't go to the quarry? What kind of foundation you got? Poo?
What, you built your computer and you say you bought the parts? L-A-M-E! Squirrels with burning tails are smarter than you. Purify your own silicon next time. Wannabe...you even used someone else's chip design and motherboard layout too, eh?
Hell, you're so lame, I bet when you say code, you mean C or some lame high level programming language. Real geeks use assembly and the better freakin come oup with their own, efficient version of machine code.
What, you said binary? Crazy kid. Everyone knows ternary is better. And while we still on electronics and their slowpoke '2/3rds the speed of light' electrons, everyone knows photons is the real deal. What, you didn't get your phd in that yet?
Go home. Pack it up. Lazy bastard.
In any case, he already said he used Mac OS X, not windows, so he gets the point and click without spending 2 weeks recoding a single app. Freakin person codes before he learns to read...what's up with that?
Or any industry. A lot of companies are switching to maya, now that its actually cheaper than max.
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
http://www.pixels3d.com You might want to give these guys a look. Outside of that, I'd suggest looking at Lightwave and Cinema3D r8 in that order. Good luck with your decision(s)...
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
Although not mentioned often in the media, one of the most-kept secrets in the 3D industry is a relatively inexpensive tool called TrueSpace by Caligari.
First, note that this tool does NOT produce the kind of photorealistic images you get in lightwave, BUT what it has going for it is market-leading modeling tools and bar none the absolute most intuitive user interface on the market (this is not to say that the renderer is bad, the latest version now comes with a real nice third-party renderer which produces very nice renders).
I recommend you give it a try so it becomes your modeling program, and then export your work to render in Lightwave or whatever else.
Note that all the tools you mention Maya has (as well as Lightwave and the others) actually appeared first in many cases in TrueSpace (like the clay deformation tool, as well as many other "free form organic" tools.
The cool thing about it is that you actually create your objects and scenes in true 3D (but you can also bring top/bottom/left/right/front/back views if you wish), and the controls are simply awe-inspiring in easy of use and downright common sense (I have NEVER read the manual, and this something hard to say about any other 3D program out there). Oh yeah, everything is in real time as well, even in solid render mode!
This has to be the most-copied tool in the 3D world, and ironically the one that gets the least amount of credit. Check it out, I think they have an older version you can download as trialware for free.
On a side note, since you design GUIs, and come from a Photoshop background, I think you'll find this tool to be very intuitive. I myself use it for creating pseudo-3D GUI elements all the time, and then bringing it in into Photoshop for further refining.
First, you're on the WRONG site.
= 299
Go to CGTalk or Highend3d, not Slashdot.
Check this link out.
http://zaon.org/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid
Now, Lightwave is OK. I didn't like it. I use MAX 5 with brazil R/S renderer. As photorealistic as you can get. I've tried out the new XSI 3 but i'll stick with Max.
If you're new to 3D, Max is ideal for starting but you want to move onto XSI sooner or later.
Oh for god's sake. He's interested in learning to use a 3D package, NOT learning how to PROGRAM one. There's a huge difference between those two. Most people could care less about how to program their software packages, so long as they work. That sort of attitude is in no small part the type of mentality that keeps the open source concept from breaking out into the mainstream.
Yes, you're probably a troll, but I just think that was too silly to to leave alone.
this is slashdot. If you want news for heterosexuals, check out kuro5hin.org
if you want cad like accuracy, FormZ is the way to go.
Not the fastest renderer, but an excellent tool. I know quite a few product designers who use it.
I used form-Z for all my 3D rendering and design work while working towards my BS in Architecture degree. Check out the gallery for someone else's work. I didn't have the CPU power at the time to do anything like what's in that gallery. But if you're going for realism, form-Z is one of the best on Mac OS X. I also suggest looking at ElectricImage.
I don't know anything about 3D, but I want to make sure I have the best program available, and it has to have bubbly pastel buttons and be endorsed by Steve Jobs.
When you download a demo, there is usually an option that asks you to "select software you already use", which lists some common 3D packages. These lists are usually a great starting point to see what's out there.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
This package has by far the best rendering engine I have ever seen. The highest quality setting uses a rendering technique called raydiosity. This is similar to ray tracing in that it follows light rays from their source to the camera. However instead of just tracing ray paths, the renderer also keeps track of color information. For example if you have a red tinted mirror or red glass the light reflected or refracted picks up the color information from the object. If you had a red apple next to a white object the light reflecting from the apple will color the adjacent object. This additional information dramaticly increases the realism if the rendered scene. This is because light acts like it does in real life. Check it out at: www.strata.com. The demo is free, the full package is only $450 and is OSX native.
Before you can render, you still need to create the models. The best 3D model creator out there is formZ. It is very easy to use, but it has a steep learning curve because there is so much you can do with it. Version 4 is due out in another month or two, and brings formZ to a whole new level.
The models for the Star Wars movies, Oceans 11, a couple of the Batman movies, and a few other heavy CG-effects movies were all initially created with formZ before they were brought into other packages (mainly Maya) for advanced texturing and animation.
For rendering $B!=(B I have to admit being a bit torn between Lightwave and Maya. Maya I feel is better optimized for spreading renderings across massively clustered systems. But Lightwave is easier to learn, and has rendering capabilities that Maya does not.
Probably, in the end, you will end up owning all three of these packages. Creating the models in formZ and then using Maya or Lightwave, depending on what the end result needs to be.
All these programs will run natively in OS X and take advantage of the presence of multiple processors. Form-Z ver. 4 will also be able to automatically take advantage of network-distributed rendering (e.g. using a cluster) directly for a rendering.
Good luck!
Whew! This water sure is cold!
Except Lightwave. It has the best interface of any 3D app I have ever seen.
Geek Rappers of the World Unite!
...trying out the packages, but mostly trying to figure out what 3D tasks you specifically need. Various programs have various strengths. Some programs have amazing modeling tools (Maya) some have great texturing tools (C4D is pretty good), some are good all around with a top notch renderer (Lightwave). Your needs define what package you should use, not the other way around..so the biggest question to ask yourself is what you know you need. Saying "everything" will cause you grief :)
I've been doing 3D on a mac for many years, and I can honestly tell you that I've had to use different tools at different times. Lately I've been staying pretty much in Maya. The built-in renderer has it's flaws but it is by no means poor...Your lighting, shading, texturing skills will play a larger role than the renderer, plus that are plug-ins to export to a Renderman compatible renderer.
There are some other cheap options that are pretty decent programs..they aren't mainstream, but if you're only using 3D as a secondary tool to add to your illustration/presentation arsenal, it might be cheaper and better in the long run. I can safely recommend things like Pixels3D (http://www.pixels.net) and Hash Animation Master (http://www.hash.com). Pixels just came out with Mac OS X version too which is looking pretty decent, and their Tempest renderer is pretty nice too.
The short and the skinny...if 3D is your primary focus, decide on your needs. Maya is an amazing all around tool and the renderer simply stands out because everything else about the program is so great, that the renderer simple seems like the sore thumb out. If your needs with 3D are secondary, a cheaper package would suit you better and will provide the tools you'd need for reasonably advanced 3D.
Last but not least..everyone's got their favorite and it all means fuzz-all to you...you need to decide what suits you best by trying out as much as you can.
Why not try ET Shade? If it's images you're looking for, ET Shade has a intuitive interface, its unbelievably easy for its learning curve, and the images produced are extremely polished and beautiful. Hardly anybody has heard of it because it's created by the Japanese and widely popular over there. I personally feel its better than all the other packages put together, a brilliant rarity, just like anything apart from MS marketing power. Check out the gallery images and demo at :
expressiontools.com
But the open source version isn't quite buildable yet. The developers are trying to straighten out the sources and clean up the build process. The project is still being set up.
Meanwhile, you can download the old NaN version, EULA and all (you're agreeing to the EULA of a defunct company!), and a keyfile that makes the licensing system happy, from blender.org. Works fine.
All 3D packages have wierd user interfaces. Editing in 3D is so complicated that there's no agreement on how to do it. Blender, though, is unusually wierd; it has a few menus, many buttons, too many control keys, and a little gesture recognition. It has its fanatics, but not enough of them, which is why NaN went bust.
Incidentally, one implication of the wierd user interface problem is that just downloading a 3D app and playing it doesn't get you much of anywhere. These things take a while to learn, typically months.
If you're going to do serious work, and the output is video or film (not games), Maya is probably the way to go. It's the de facto standard in film work right now. 3DS Max leads in games, and Lightwave in TV. Softimage used to be #1 in film, but they blew it, much to my annoyance as a Softimage user. Blender remains a toy, although if the free software community gets behind it and cleans it up, it could be more of a contender.
one benefit of lightwave is that they have a free (as in beer) (as in, as many nodes as you want) render client coming out for linux (q42002). so you can make a cheap render farm, woohoo!
on top of an awesome modeler and strong animator... i'd say go with LW.
it's harder to learn, but easier to use for actually getting stuff done than most other 3d apps..
-Si
Think Different. Think ET Shade
I'll take an example of a nose for starters. In polygon modeling, a person would create different size spheres, do boolean add/subtract to get a rough shape. Once it gets close enough, a modeler will start pushing vertices. To get a sufficiently smoothe looking nose, one might need several thousand vertices, which makes pushing individual points very challenging. Nurbs on the otherhand go through the same process, but since every curve is a spline, you need fewer control vertices and therefore makes it easier. After all, if you only have to push/pull 100 control points vs 500 you're going to get your job done faster. Hash splines are fundamentally different than NURB's or polygons, therefore you can reduce the control vertices down even further.
Having gone through all that, what does this mean towards a job? In many cases like movie production, modeling is done with tracing physical models which are carved by skilled artists. Those tools are expensive and typically are beyond the reach of a student and most people.
The thing to keep in mind is learning all the various techniques and don't tie yourself to one software package, because the skills should transfer from one software to another. Also, have a firm understanding of lathing, boolean, extrusion and surfacing techniques. Back to the example of a human face. Modeling the human face depends in a large part on the type of animation you're going to do. If you're doing tons of voice animation and detailed facial expressions, it's important to design the mesh so that it follows the muscle structure. For example, doing facial animation in polygons is very hard because it's difficult to line up all the polygons so it matches up to the wrinkles. Where as NURB's tend to promote a verticle/horizontal grid. Most wrinkles on a human face line up on a nice grid. Hash splines give you that flexibility, because sometimes do you want a 3 point surface. One popular mesh design in NURB modeling for human faces is to extrude out from the mouth. Some techniques are directly affected by the technology, but most techniques are applicable to most software. Just some food for thought.
I come from the game industry so maybe my opinion is skewed but: Although many packages are good, a few packages are more likely to get you a job in the 3D industry all other things being equal.
.... So, as Maya is the only of the big 3 that's currently on the Mac that's my recommendation. Learn Maya
Those packages are #1 Maya, #2 Softimage or Softimage XSI and for games in the U.S., 3DS Max.
Lightwave is, for all intents and purposes, not used and neither is pretty much any other package (yes, I'm sure you can find 1 or 2 developers out there using something else...that's my point. It's 1 or 2)
Of course I said "all other things being equal". The most important thing is that you do impressive work. The better your work the more likely you are to get hired.
But, if you work is most likely going to be somewhat average, which 98% of all submissions I've seen are, then next in the list is "does this guy have experience using the tools we use?" Those tools are not Lightwave, they are not Electric ?!?!? whatever, they are not Blender or Shade or
I can't believe no one has mentioned Form-Z yet. It has an excellent renderer if that is your primary concern. It uses the Lightworks radiozity engine. It doesn't have much in the animation department though.
I hear Zbrush is pretty nice, and affordable!
Pixologic Web Site
I don' t know why this wasn't mentioned by anyone else, but its a great app. works good in OS X, very few bugs (if any).
Its not too pricy and its fun to use and pretty dang good, i use it, and im a totally n00b when it comes to 3D stuff too.. i totally recommend it http://www.e-onsoftware.com
"an eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind"
the first major high-end 3D package to be comercially ported to LINUX was HOUDINI from sidefx. alias' maya and sidefx Houdini are like the pepsi-coke of high-end 3D.
they've also got a free 'Houdini Apprentice' programme, so you can try it - works on Linux!
they used Houdini to animate gandalf's fireworks, and animate the rushing river horses in lord of the rings. they've used it in the star trek movies, Terminator 3D, and just about every sci-fi effects flick out there - check it out:
www.sidefx.com
a lot of the most interesting highend 3D technologies started with HOUDINI - Procedural Motion and Graphics OP networks were invented by
the Programmers at Side Effects.
some of the things you can do with their 3D animation
software (Houdini 5.5) are:
- In-Viewport editing generates procedural 'memory' of construction history.
- Support of multiple geometry types: 3D NURBS, Bezier, Mesh, Poly, L-systems (itterative geometry), and Metaballs.
- Procedural 3D Surface Modelling (SOPs > "Noun").
- Procedural Waveform/Motion, Audio, and Channel Editing (CHOPs > "Verb").
- Procedural Particle Systems (POPs) for simulating Smoke, Fire, and Gases.
- Procedural Shader generation (SHOPs).
- Procedural 2D Compositing (COPs).
- Softbody Inverse Kinematics & Character / Facial Animation capabilities.
- Organic modelling of plant growth over time via L-systems algorithms.
- Integrated Metabolic, NURBS, and Polygonal Sub-Division Surface modelling.
- Integrated VEX RenderMan-like shading language for mantra Renderer.
- Integrated Scripting and Expression Languages.
- Integrated RenderFarm capabilities.
- Extensive Scripting support in: hscript, tcl, etc.
they've also got an offshoot for doing cool realtime 3D graphics ('TOUCH' - used on the RUSH tour this summer) at:
www.derivativeinc.com
cheers!
john.
I am just an amature, but I really like Maya...
A lot of people now are usign XSI though, and I seem to remember a while back a full-featured version(with very strict license) was avalible for FREE. There is also a personal learning edition of Maya, but it is im-fucking-possible to use because it has this water mark, on the renderings AND in the workspace.
I think "the second movie of that one series that was once great, but the first one fubared it, and I can never again mention the title of it", was rendered in XSI =/
btw - Houdini's renderer app ('mantra') was used for rendering the 'senator kelly' scene in x-men (where he turns to water) -- to give you some idea of the renderer that comes with the package. apparently, writing your own shaders (like RenderMan), and it supports a hybrid of scanline rendering and raytracing.
mantra is a bit better than mental ray (features/quality/speed), and on par with renderman - industrial strength.
I've only used Blender under Windows and Linux (mostly the latter) and yes it has the strangest and least intuitive user interface on it that I've ever seen.
It produces nice output if you know how to set it up--the defaults are really crappy because people like results. Start playing with the 7000 settings in the render pane and you can turn on handy things like antialiasing that make the output prettier.
It's very very powerful and versatile. Look at some of the images that have been created by it--I don't remember the site anymore (elysion.com perhaps?), but some of the stills were fantastic. They look like everything from cartoons to turn of the century art. It scales well with resolution.
It's free--can't beat that. If you're just using it on the side (as the poster seems to be), then is it worth n-thousand dollars?
At least on Linux, it's one of the most stable pieces of software I've ever had the pleasure of dealing with--along with finale 2000d on Windows, These two are probably the only applications that have never segfaulted, crashed out, or whatever.
The downsides:
- No Undo function (if you save frequent revisions you're ok. Being aware of the inverses of your actions is handy too.)
- Difficult UI (takes weeks to months to learn. Once you learn it it's like a bicycle and becomes very natural--even subconcious. Once you're used to it it's very good, but until then it's like swimming up niagara falls)
- Indeterminate state right now (the project is in a transition period)
It's up to you--If it's unstable on Mac then it may not be a choice anyhow, but I've used it with high levels of success for years and found it to be a very capable piece of software...if a little difficult to get around.
Brian
vi is better... let the flamewars begin ;-)
Check out Pixels 3D 4.1.1 for OS X. $400 and has a great feature set and should do wonderful still models. Heck even if you buy it and decide its not right for you within 14 days they give you your cash back. It now comes bundled with a procedural shader system that I think is on par with Renderman (of Pixar fame). www.pixels.net
Aqsis is a GPL implementation of the Renderman spec. It probably isn't as full featured as BMRT was, but it does have the benefits of being really free and under active development.
Actually, Terragen is much better at landscape rendering than Bryce . . . but it currently lacks the ability to incorporate objects into the scenery. It does an amazing job of water, atmosphere and surface rendering.
I use LightWave mostly for still images and love it. I have also used trueSpace, and played with 3D Studio, but LightWave is my favorite. If I have a runner up, it's Maxon's Cinema 4D. Some of my reasons for using LW are:
;) You don't initially, but there are plenty around.
-- The rendering engine is stunning. It is state-of-the-art and [relatively] fast, with caustics, radiosity, high dynamic range support etc.. Once you outgrow what it can do, there is a plug-in from Worley labs for subsurface scattering (think skin, translucent stuff) that is incredible. Did I say you don't need plug-ins?
-- LW splits the modeler/animation part into two modules which are well integrated. A single keystroke lets you jump back and forth. A lot of people gripe about this, but as far as I can tell, none of them use LightWave. A separate modeler means that you can easily isolate an object from a big scene, modify it conveniently, and drop it right back into the scene--press one key, LW does the rest. One of the benefits is speed. Once your scene grows beyond a certain point, your redraws slow down. Being able to work easily with just one object at a time means you have a fast modeler no matter how large your scene gets.
(BTW, an object can consist of many different layers which can be animated separately.)
-- LW is "easy" to learn. I put easy in quotes, because there are literally thousands of features in all of these packages. Think Photoshop x 10 or 100. In my opinion, the Maya style interface looks great in a demo. It probably meets all of the interface guidelines out there and has some innovative ideas in this area. But I find LW's simple text labels far easier to use, even with its quirky keyboard assignments.
-- LW has a very helpful on-line community. Take a look at the Newtek community site and visit some of the LW support forums. Lots of tutorials and quality advice.
-- LW is *very* inexpensive compared to the other packages. What you get in the box will keep you busy exploring for years. A lot of the other packages require lots of add-ins to get anywhere near LW functionality.
Some other things you might want to consider:
-- There are many different ways to produce smooth organic looking surfaces. For things such as modeling people and animals, subdivision modeling works well and LW does a great job in this area. For mechanical models, where you need precision, you will want something else. LW offers spline patching for this purpose, which works, although the LW version of that leaves a lot to be desired. For the ultimate in precision you probably want to look at NURBS, which LW does not support at all.
-- You need to figure out how you like to work. Everybody who does this kind of work has a different style, a different way of approaching modeling, surfacing, animation, etc., and each of these programs tends to either support that style or not. One suggestion is to watch an expert at work, using the programs you are considering. You can try them out, but because of the complexity you are likely to miss a lot.
-- Don't get too hung up on high end features. Radiosity and caustics are a case in point. Using those features you can produce stunning output. But you pay for that in rendering time. If you are creating a still image and you are well organized, then it probably does not matter all that much. But if you are producing an animation, and you rendering time jumps from 10 minutes per frame to 10 hours, then you have a choice: read up on shadow maps and rendering without even raytracing, or get yourself a nice rendering farm and a personal power plant--oh, and don't forget an air conditioner.
This may be because it is the program that I started with, but Lightwave's interface makes the most sense to me. The Modeler is just that. Layout is essentially your virtual set. Set up your camera, lights, props and then off you go. Layout has a very good built-in renderer (there were 50 shots in Titanic that used Lightwave, and many other examples). There are also plugins you can get to enhance it, as well.
.
Your scenes are text files. And the scripting language, LScript, lets you generate and modify scenes directly. You can define your own hot-keys, including calling up custom scripts and plugins.
There are also plugins that let you import models form different formats. So, if you have a preferred modeler. .
Moekandu
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Are all /. readers complete idiots?
DID YOU NOTICE HE WANTS SOMETHING FOR MACOSX, NO LINUX AND WINDOWS!
So why are you offering advice on povray and 3ds max?!
Is Microsoft Paint. Not only does it start quickly and have low overhead (unlike some other graphics programs *cough*Maya*cough* *cough*Lightwave*cough*), but just look at all the features! With MSPaint, you can draw straight lines, curvy lines, make them different colors, or even add text! It's even got something that lets you fill in big areas in seconds with a single color, and it allows you to zoom up to like 8x!
I mean, holy shit; with all that, how can you go wrong?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
well,
because you're on the mac, it does kind of truncate your choices - but they are some damn fine choices.
DISCLAIMER: i'm a lw guy on the pc and i am a gung ho lw fan - though i use max and maya at work too.
now then,
basically, i say your REAL choices come down to LW and MAYA. EI i hear is good but for all intents and purposes, it's time has come and gone and there's not as large a presence in the industry or even a community compared to lw and maya. also, many of its features are now awkward and backward compared to other apps.
maxon i hear is really very good too. but especially stateside, it's presence in the industry seems very small indeed.
now whether that's important to you or not is up in the air. personally, i find it important because you could be learning valuable job skills that can possibly earn you a job sometime in the future.
on that criteria alone, maya wins hands down. if you look at want ads, the ONLY apps you ever hear mentioned are 3ds MAX and MAYA. and they're both about equally prevalent.
as for render quality, you are right, lw would have blown maya out of the water -- but now, maya has mental ray so i'd say it's a dead heat.
but maya is $2000 for complete and you have to live with the knowledge that there's still an UNLIMITED out there -- that would irk me. also, it does not seem that A/W takes into account hobbyist finances so things like their SUPPORT CONTRACT and prices for FUTURE UPGRADES. you get the feeling that you're dealing with a gigantic corporate entity that deals with the 'big boys' and they are merely tolerating you.
you can get lw for $1495 - $900. also, it feels much more KNOWABLE than maya. it may be true that maya is much more flexible but that flexibility also ups the complexity... such that every function is not necessarily available through the gui.
though in maya, there are a LOT of menus and a LOT of choices... sometimes, feeling a bit crowded with options.
another thing about lw is that though it does play with the 'big boys', often as an unadvertised component in their pipeline, the company and the community is very down to earth and accessible. it is priced for the hobbyist prosumer and that applies to the product and upgrades - i paid $295 to upgrade to version 7.0. also, you can upgrade any version of lw from 4.0 up for that same price. i would venture that this is not the case with maya. i would say that lw is a BLUE COLLAR 3d app! and if i were newtek (the makers), i'd wear that label as a badge of honor.
i use maya at work and it is very very nice. there's a lot about it that is very well thought out. but there are flaws where too much of its complexity is exposed at inappropriate levels.
lw is very knowable. if you want to know an app inside and out and attain one man army, guru level knowledge, lw is designed for that. you don't need to hire a programmer or td to milk every drop of functionality from lw.
but then again, lw's UI may feel a bit primitive ( i came into from 3ds v. 4 [a dos app] and felt right at home with lw though!). but i would say that it is EVERY BIT AS CAPABLE AS MAYA IF NOT MORESO.
certain features like the fluid effects in the unlimited version of maya is included in lw and has been for a while.
final thing of note is that lw is POLYS and SUBDIVISION SURFACES ONLY. while maya has those as well as NURBS. so maya can represent a more complete SAMPLER of cgi techniques. but then again, surprisingly, a great many things still boil down to RAW POLYS more often than not and though i am prejudiced, i find lw much faster and intuitive to work with polys than maya.
oh well, that's my opinion. i've tried to be fair but be warned what camp i hail from.
jin choung
Check out this:h tml
http://www.discreet.com/products/gmax/gmax_index.
- its a slightly stripped down version of 3DS Max - but it's free as long as you register on the web site. It has a few manuals and tutorials to start you off
If you insist on sticking to Mac, then about the only real choice is Maya.
Of course, it has a cryptic interface and is far from the easiest package in the world to use....But if you are serious, you need a serious software solution; You apparently aren't serious, since you are limiting yourself to Mac, so Maya is the best choice for a system to learn in case you ever do get serious.
That was slightly convoluted.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
I have tried lightware, maya, truspace and 3dsmax. Both TruSpace and 3Dsmax have proved to be the most useful pair in different situations for modelling. 3dsmax is powerful. truspace is quickndirty and really fast. If you are planning this for high speed applications like gaming... you should be spending more time looking for proper fileformat convertors like polytrans (too expensive?) and other tools that will polish your models for usage like removing inward-pointing faces and that will add physics areas to the model files.
Wouldnt it be nice if gimp and blender were integrated for quick and powerful texture creations?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
...are all I know on OSX. If you want to do character animation, Maya will top Lightwave and probably Electric Image or Maxon. But Maya's renderer is crap and buggy, and I don't know how good mental ray integration is yet, especially on OSX. Lightwave has a good renderer, but sucks for character animation. Also, not all the plugins you may need are available under OSX.
For landscape rendering, I'm using MojoWorld 2.0 from Pandromeda Inc. It's IMHO the best world generator around, even if it exists only for MacOS and Windows. Quite cheap too, and work on whole planets instead of chunk of geography.
--
edomaur
So don't worry, it's not doing anything nastier than you've already seen. If you don't believe me, look it up in the virus list.
I've looked into tons of 3D packages and worked with a lot of them.
:-) (SCNR)
Maya, Softimage, Houdini, 3DSMax and even Lightwave would be somewhat of an overkill for what you're looking for.
Most of these Programms have an extensive (and expensive) plugin architecture that usually attribute to the needs of film and video studios, with tons of stuff for movematching, compositing and NLE integration and all that kind of stuff.
What you want is a package that gets the 3D looking good and the job done hassle free, with a rock-solid renderer integrated. Free packages like Blender can be very good (Blender is), but they pack to much of a steep learning curve and to much fiddling to get the actual pic looking good.
Cinema 4D (http://www.maxon.de/) quite possibly could be your ticket to ride. It's easy as 123 for n00bs, has one of the fastest and best internal renderers and has a top-notch mac version. And - a very important must-have for grafic designers - it's, afaik, the only package that comes with a set of standard 2D vector format import filters. Read: 2D drawing in Freehand (or whatever), import to Cinema, extrude to 3D model, profit.
This funcionality costs a fortune with other packages like Realsoft3D or Maya.
The alternative that could be interessting for you is the new kid on the block "Carrara". Its very easy to use, feature rich, cheap and has a mac version aswell (http://www.eovia.com/). It could very much be the upcoming cinema-killer. I don't no about that must-have 2d vector import though. Check that out before buying.
Once again: The often recommended Maya, Softimage, Houdini and co. are cool, but actually only for people who do nothing but living on 3D day-in and day-out. Or do you give a shit if you've got HDTV format compatability? Thought so.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Radiance is best for realistic lighting simulation. Even better than POV-Ray, available for all good OSes, even Mac OS X. But it is only a rendering package. No modelling.
I have been using Caligari Truespace for the last six years and found it to be excellent.
The interface is the most intuitive on the market so modelling is a pleasure and quick.
It uses the Lightwave rendering engine and the current version Truespace 6 only costs $595. What more could you want?
If the Mac OS X constraint wasn't there, I'd say realsoft 3D Like most good raytracers such as Lightwave and Cinema 4D, it's a new version of an old Amiga raytracer, real3D. Unlike most raytracers, it's primarily CSG-based. Has a linux version.
Go to http://www.cgtalk.com and look at the standard answer to this question in the General forum....
Basically the end desision will depend on a lot of things. Your budget - what type of work you specifically want to do.
I can however reccomend if you havent already getting your hands on a copy of Wings3d its a dedicated open source modeller that works well with most other programs and is fairly simple to learn. you can get it from http://www.wings3d.com
well,
SGI has opensourced 3D toolkits:
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/inventor/
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/performer/
bofh
I'm not an artist, but I like doing 3D for fun. So I started out with Cinema4D 6.x at that time and I liked it a lot. I tried also 3DSMax but it was much harder to learn and not very intuitive. Later on I switched to Maya and I dumped the other packages because I really loved that interface and I couldn't do much with other apps afterwards. Now I switched to Blender for a simple reason. It is free and under GPL now. The renderer is ok for my needs in all of these packages so I have no other disadvantages. From my experience you should by some books if you really want to go in a bit deeper, but this is true for all packages anyway.
:) If your primary goal is stills and renderquality is important you might consider using an external renderer like RenderMan. Most apps can export or have some plug-ins to export except with Blender. It depends on what your primary goals are and how good you are. It might be better to start of with an easier app and get some basic modelling skills.
Cinema4D is IMO easiest to learn and gives fast results. It is rather intuitive to use and will be no problem for a beginner. If you want to go into more depth it might be a bit limiting or you have to do more manual work.
3DSMax is something of standard software it seems and has a great user community, but I don't really like the interface, though I never tried very hard to learn it. Many good books available and much support. The disadvantage for 3DSMax is that there are a lot of plug-ins which will be very expensive for certain needs, so it depends on what you actually want to do and how much you can spend. 3DSMax has a free version that is free for non-commercial purposes.
Maya is IMO one of the best considering the interface and it has many powerfull features. You can get fast results once you master the interface but the renderer is not so good as in other apps. There is also a free version out for non-commercial purposes.
Blender is now my current app. It is not very intuitive to use, but once you get used to it the interface is really great. You just can't start it and do something usefull without a book or some tutorials. The sourcecode is no GPL'ed so there should be exporters soon be available. There is a big demandm for that on the mailing lists for Blender development.
I think that for each of these programs you can get good support either from the vendor, if you can afford it, or by the online community. So there is nothing to fear.
First let's get this straight. No matter how much you spend on your software, you're not going to make a hit film with one lonely Mac and one brain. It still takes a whole team of people to get something more than a couple of minutes of animation together. On your own, even that is likely to take a few months of your spare time.
Whatever you choose, you need to invest plenty of time into it, get a well recommended book about how to use it (don't just trust the help files). Once you've exausted the book, look on the web, hit the forums. Main thing is, don't give up on one just because it's not as pretty as you'd like.
Unless you can afford to fork out the price of a good second hand car, get a copy of Blender, and really use it, don't just say "Euch!" and throw it away, it really is very powerful.
I started out with 3DSMax at work, but I'm not a designer, so I don't get exclusive use of our "one-seat" license. I considered warez for home use, but then figured there was no point doing anything if I couldn't at least publish it, guilt free.
I'm still with Blender, and I haven't even nearly reached it's limits yet. The renderer is not perfect, but for modelling and straightforward animation it kicks donkey. It seems to me that NaN kinda let it slip a bit towards their final hold on the product. Now that it's open source, I'm expecting to see a whole bunch of improvements to it, so I'll probably stick or now.
Perhaps one day I'll outgrow it, at which point I'll consider forking out for something a bit more mainstream (probably Maya). I don't see that being for a few years though.
You fool! You've given cheese to a lactose intolerant volcano god! Do you know what that means?
Well. . . To be honest, there are quite a few packages out there. You will be limited in choice by only two things. 1) How much money you wish to spend. and 2) Your operating system. ( In your case the Mac OS ) Usually the limiting factor for most folks is budget ( since we not all ultra wealthy ). I know Maya, Lightwave, Strata Studio Pro, and Electric Image are available for the Mac. There are probably more, but these come to mind initially. I personally own and use Lightwave, Rhino, and Softimage XSI. However, Maya seems to be a choice for many folks due to its feature list and it's new competitive price. It all boils down to what you plan to do with the package. Do you plan on animating? Or simply modeling / rendering stills? You may be able to get away with a MUCH cheaper solution than the animation packages ( Maya, Lightwave, etc. etc. )if you are only going to do still work. There are some additional items to keep in mind with these packages. They are horsepower intensive. Some are picky about what graphics cards / drivers you have loaded. Most have hardware locks ( known as the dreaded dongle ) that will require either a serial connection or a USB connection. The software WILL NOT run without them. ( Unless you're running a crack of some kind ) Run the biggest and meanest system you can afford. If you just HAVE to use NURBS ( and the NURBS vs. SUBDIVISION discussions have pages and pages of why one is better than the other ) then know that Lightwave does not support NURBS at all. Here is the list of some of the more popular software that I am aware of off the top of my head. Lightwave 3D Only one package- $1500 http://www.lightwave3d.com Maya Entry level package - $2000 Advanced Package- $6000 http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/news/home.shtml Rhino Only one package- $1200 http://www.rhino3d.com Strata 3DPro Only one package- $700 http://www.strata.com/ 3D Studio Max Only one package- $3500 http://www.discreet.com/index-nf.html Electric Image Only one package- $1295 http://www.electricimage.com/ If you have an unlimited budget, then you can consider some of the following: ( I don't think these support the MAC though ) Softimage XSI ( http://www.softimage.com ) Nichiman Mirai ( http://www.izware.com/mirai ) Houdini(http://www.techimage.co.uk/tc/products/hou dini.html )
I'm sure there are others out there that I forgot to list, ( such as Animation Master, Bryce, Carrera, etc. etc. ) but the ones I listed above comprise the bulk of the most popular 3D apps out there. It all boils down to money, your system capability, and what toolsets you want available to you. In the right hands all of them can produce outstanding results, they all just have slightly different methods of producing them. :)
-Nehumanuscrede
I've been doing CG for over 7 years now. I started on 3D Studio R4, moved to 3D Studio Max 1.2, then to trueSpace 3 (yes, I went from Max to trueSpace, and boy was I happy). For a while I used Lightwave 5.5 for animation. Recently I've been using Blender, and I'm more than happy with the results it gets.
You've asked about features, things like NURBS and other modeling tools. NURBS is a cute way to model things. The use of bezier splines, in effect, gives you the curved surfaces required for many real-life objects quite quickly, and can scale quite nicely to your hardware for display purposes. The problem with NURBS is that they're harder to set up for animation without first converting them into a standard mesh. And once you've converted them into a mesh in most apps, you can't go back, so if you want to make a change to the original NURBS cage you have to start all over again.
Modern apps support a relatively newish technique called subdivision modelling. Lightwave, I think, was the first to support this (they called it metanurbs or something strange). Basically, you rough out the shape with polygons and low-poly editing tools, then apply a smoother to the mesh. This works marvelously well in most cases, and I wouldn't recommend a package without this feature (I remember the entry-level Maya package, for a while, came without it.) I've used it to do everything from people to bathroom geometry to cars, and it all works quite well with subdiv.
However, in the end you have to choose what's right for your own artistic style of creation. Many people will disagree with me on the NURBS issue, and they'd be right -- for them. You need to play with both and figure out what you like.
If you can afford it, I recommend Lightwave. It's what's used on most high-end animation projects these days (Pixar uses Lightwave Modeler for all its movies, then dumps the geometry into custom software for shading), and once you start using it, you'll never look back. The books that come with it are decent for people who've used other 3D packages, but there's also a bevy of great newbie-friendly books out there, as well as thousands of website-based tutorials. Lastly, it runs on Mac, but it also runs on PC and some variant of unix (I forget which), with an uniform interface on every machine, so like Photoshop it won't matter much where you're using it. The skills transfer almost invisibly.
However, do not make the mistake of dismissing Blender. People bitch about the renderer because it doesn't support many features in modern renderers and doesn't use shaders. You know what? You likely won't miss them. Caustics can be faked with minimal effort even in animation. And for all the complaining, the test renders I've gotten out of Blender are good, and reasonably high quality. The problem with it is the learning curve. The best bet is to get the books from the blender e-shop, and go from there. It's expensive, but nowhere near as bad as buying lightwave outright. Also, blender is in opensource development now, and will be supporting a lot more neat new stuff in the future, like a renderman-compliant renderer and (hopefully) the ability to compress renders into quicktime movies. Oh, on stability: Blender OS X cannot render to a window -- you must render to a view. That will solve most of your problems. Also, be sure to download the 2.25 publisher beta and not the old 2.23 beta from the blender.org site. The publisher beta is what I've been using for three months now on my iBook, and it works just fine.
On Blender speed: rendering speed is increased a lot by rendering from the command line. Search the forums on this, especially on www.elysiun.com. Also, I think that Blender handles all its own double-buffering, which under OS X isn't required as Aqua double-buffers all windows automatically. This means that stuff is getting copies twice as much per frame, slowing things down. I haven't looked too closely at the sources, but I think that's where the slowdown is occurring, and I hope it'll be fixed next version.
In the end: don't listen to me too much. Check out all the apps, and see what you like best. But I highly recommend both lightwave and blender for my fellow OS X enthusiasts.
- Cloud
Rhino, render in 3dmax using the brazil rendering plugin. It looks great. Look on google for some Brazil galleries, you'll be amazed
Lightwave is very easy to learn, has a very good modeler (for polygons and subdivision surfaces; no NURBS though)
sorry, but Lightwave has had NURBS since 5.0 (maybe earlier, I forget). To use it, go into Modeler, make a box, hit TAB.
Unless you're implying that they removed it in later versions?
So what am I not getting (or getting correct) about RenderMan?
Schnapple
I'm not doing high-end 3D, but I like POVRay and agree that anyone looking at the IRTC competition will see that it can do renderings equal to and better than a lot of what is seen on TV and in the movies. Besides, if someone wants to learn what is involved in actually creating a 3D rendered scene, working with POVRay at the script level introduces you to all the 3D aspects the program has to offer. There are modellers available for POVRay to make it easier, but if you really want to understand what you are doing (which I think is the key to being able to go a step farther) coding the scripts and playing with the parameters is the way to go.
Another 3D modelling package that you may be interested in checking out is BRL-CAD. It is from the US Military and is free (least for US citizens). It appears to be a VERY high-end package and is available for Linux and most Unix derivatives (which I think includes the Mac). You do have to fill out some sort of license form, but it is still free. Check it out on the site at:
http://ftp.arl.mil/
(OK, maybe it is not really free. But since you have already paid for it with taxes you may as well get yourself a copy.)
Can't help you much on packages, but can on a definition.
:)
NURBS - Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline
Essentially, a NURBS surface is a mesh of B-Splines, and B-Splines are a way to represent a curve using knots and points (sometimes called control points or de Boor points). A B-Spline is similar to a Bezier curve (try it in Photoshop). The only difference is you add "knots" which force the curve to go through some fixed points. The first point and first knot are always the same, as are the last point and last knot (these are the "edges" of the mesh), so you need at least 3 points and two knots to make a B-Spline curve and 4 knots and 5 points to represent a mesh (if the B-splines share point between their curves, which not normal - 6 is normal - you end up with an hourglass shape).
The mesh itself is called non-uniform because the knots don't need to be equally spaced from one another. Rational means simply using real numbers not Imaginary.
here's a picture of a B-spline
There are numerous problems with NURBS surfaces, most of which you'll never worry about (us developer types do). There's a pretty good article on this by Intel
On the other hand, NURBS have the advantage of being able to remove knots and control points and scale performance for processors (sacrificing quality).
Interestingly (to me, at least), the points aren't called weighted control points anywhere (at least not from most google results I looked at), as they were in most texts when I took computer graphics in college. All weighted control points means is describing the points of the NURBS curve as a unit vector (vhat, v with the carat symbol on top) and a multiple (weight) of that vector, rather than the actual x,y,z of the point. The point formula was thus w*vhat, where vhat=v/Norm(v). That's probably technobabble to most people, so I'll shut up now
It seems many posters missed the part about running in MAC OS X.
I don't have any insite on the MAC except, a program called VectorWorks has been in my sites for a good drafting tool on the MAC.
As far as any other insites, I've used AutoCAD (which stinks for 3D work), I've Used Microstation from Bentley (which has lots of features i like) I've used 3D Studio MAX, (I don't like, it's too constraining) I've fall'n in love with Rhino3D. So if you have no objections to working with a PC I strongly, Highly, even if you have to borrow a PC, recommend visiting http://www.rhino3d.com/ and getting a Demo.
My company just bought another copy, and we avoid spending money on software when ever possible.
Maya is nice, but if you aren't animating you're only using a very small portion of its abilities.
Rather than learn an inferior program (I use that adjective lightly), learn the one that does the most, so you don't have to re-learn the basics in a different suite later.
One of the reasons I use Maya (recently switching from 3D Studio Max) is because it does everything, without the need for extra plugins. Truthfully, I don't use most of the features, but it's nice to know I can. After all, I don't use 90% of the features in Word, but that doesn't mean I'll switch to Works.
As for cost, most 3D programs, including Maya, have demo versions and significantly reduced cost for students. A reduced-price Maya plus the cost of a community college course to qualify is dirt-cheap. Beyond that, the free versions are usually stripped-down, but contain enough features to learn the suite (which is, of course, the point).
Remember to pick up a copy of Wings3d from
www.wings3d.com for a great little free subdivision modeller.
I've been following the Newtek/Luxology spectacle for a while, and I would not call it a bitter divorce. For purposes of ensuring their continued viability should Newtek be bought out by someone, the Lightwave programmers decided to clarify what has been the case all along. Newtek does not develop or own Lightwave. Newtek is the exclusive publisher of Lightwave. This has been the case all along. Lightwave is developed and owned by a small group of programmers, who now call themselves Luxology.
There have been hints that Luxology might develop some 3D software of their own that would not be published through Newtek. I believe this is probably true, but it doesn't mean it will compete with LW, or that LW is dead. In fact, I suspect they are probably contractually prohibited from competing with Newtek/LW.
I have used LW since version 1.0 on the Amiga, and have used it on (nearly) every platform they've made it for (except the short-lived Sun and SGI ports). I think LW is an excellent all around package, and is generally a great modeller and renderer, as well as being powerful but easily learned. The polygonal modelling tools are considered some of the best in the industry both for realistic work and for realtime games modelling.
I have used 3DSMax since Max V1 (never used 3DS for DOS). It's also a good program, and very powerful and extensible. It has a strong following in the Architectural and CAD fields (due to the tie-ins with AutoCAD) and games industries (because of GMax). People with Cad/Drafting experience find it more intuitive than LW. People without this kind of background often find Max to be rigid and unintuitive compared to LW.
Maxon Cinema 4D, Hash Animation Master, Realsoft 3D, Strata, Carrara, Truespace and a handful of others all occupy a tier in the market where you get a heck of a lot of great features for a great price. Generally there is something percieved about each of these programs that makes people exclude them for 'professional' work. Often, this is complete bunk. You can get the job done with most any modern package, but some do make getting the end result easier. In any case, they're great for starters, and learning, and you can always buy something pricier later if/when you feel you have outgrown the capabilities you have.
Maya and SoftImage used to be the Kings of the industry. Max and Lightwave have steadily carved the foundation out from under this preconceived notion, and a lot of top-end work is now done in LW and Max. Nonetheless, there Big Guys do still have some edges. They are generally more expandable, scriptable, customizable and plugin-able. They often let you get deeper into the guts of the system than the other packages. This comes with a cost though -- it makes the programs very complex, and many find SI and AW:Maya to be difficult and overwhelming at first. Many people 'graduate' to the big guys after years of being happy with the functionality of other programs. SI and AW:Maya used to be very expensive, but market forces have slashed the prices of all 3D software recently, making this less of an issue.
ElectricImage has been a Mac program all along, but appears to be on unsound ground -- not even sure who owns them now (Play?) and if it's being developed.
MacOSX concerns: I know LW, Hash A:M, EI, MaxonC4D are all available now with varying degrees of Mac-ishness. I thought either SI or A:W Maya was coming, but don't remember which, or when. 3DSMax (or its sister package 3DSViz) will never be Mac because they're built entirely around Windows MFC. They couldn't even get a port to DEC Alpha WinNT to work. Not sure where Strata, Carrara, Real or Truespace stand as far as Mac ports. Also, most cross-platform apps (LW, SI, AW:Maya) have their own look & feel to be consistent with themselves on all platforms. This means they don't look like the UI-du-jour of any particular platform. Many people claim this is a Very Bad Thing, but as a cross-platform developer myself, I disagree somewhat. Don't let this be your sole deciding factor.
Oh, and shameless self-promotion: If you want to do landscapes, check out my software, World Construction Set. We even have a Mac version, though it's not MacOSX yet.
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
John - I *wish* your company would release Houdini for OS X... that would be terrific!
Having worked with Lightwave for a couple of years now (am currently working with it to create traffic accident recreations), I have to say without any hesitation that Lightwave is the biggest pain in the behind of ANY program I've ever used.
Lightwave has no semblance of a GUI that people come to expect from an application. On the Mac it disobeys virtually every human interface guideline put out by Apple. People will tell you that it's done that way to create cross-platform conformity but no other company I know plays that game. I find it just as easy to use Photoshop on a Mac as on a PC yet I don't have to learn bizarre alternate keystrokes to use it like you do in Lightwave.
Every single step you take in Lightwave requires a major effort and there is very little that is intuitive. Eventually you learn these idiosyncrasies or you spend a fair amount of time changing things to make them work properly.
Lightwave's inability to undo a large percentage of its commands, its hideous learning curve, its instability, its poor Shockwave3D export capability, its absolutely pathetic network rendering system, and many other issues make it a VERY poor choice especially for Macintosh based systems.
Even NewTek's website is a pain. Message boards are poorly designed and finding answers takes longer than it should.
So why am I using it? My company won't buy me Maya since it is too expensive and 3D Max is not available for the Mac (right now I'm stuck with a Mac).
As great as galleries are, they don't show you how much effort it takes to create them.
So if you have a PC or something other than a Mac I strongly recommend you choose something other than Lightwave.
Strata 3D! Cheap and easy! I have university level credits is Maya, 3D Studio Max (Wintel), and Others.
Strata is the easiest, and has more flexible output. (i.e. high rez single frames in a variety of usefull formats, including cmyk for impressive print quality output.
IMHO
Devin Swisher
Visual Design
Mountain Hardwear, Inc.
hey puppet!!
At work we use 3dsmax as our primary modeling and animation package. We do not use 3dsmax's default scanline renderer though, we use a 3rd party render system called BRAZIL. It is made by splutterfish, which is associated with Blur studios in Santa Monica. www.splutterfish.com
IF you are an individual artist it is a great system, well integrated into max, very artist friendly, no shader writing required if you dont want to. But the images speak for themselves, go check out some of the galleries around the web. Right now it is for 3dsmax only but they are working on the maya compatibility. Great software, great people.
...he would have learned one of these damn apps already.
Well don't forget to include Realsoft3D V4.5 in your survey. Check out http://www.realsoft.com for more info on this great 3D software :)
Spliney
I'd just like to comment on this as someone who works in the industry. Maya is a character animation system and a passable modeler but the one thing it is not is a good renderer. All the movies you just mentioned used renderman as the renderer of choice not mayas. If you are specifically looking for a good renderer then 3ds max or Lightwave are your best choices. Max is the fastest of teh two with excellent quality. Lightwave has more out of the box features but takes a long time per frame. Since you want it on Mac I'd look at lightwave. Very few high end production houses actually use the maya renderer they go out and pay thousand extra for renderman just to avoid it.
Yes, the network renderer is another great goodie (cross platform) the rendering speed is one of the fastest for the Mac, and above all
Cinema 4D HAS NEVER EVER CRASHED ON ME ONCE.
That says it all.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
GO TO RED ALERT. Space and Time are grinding to a halt.
Fucking idiot SHITSTAIN McGuspaz is speaking.
Fat man living off of government or with parents with no sex jerking off to pedophile porn and trolling Slashdot is speaking. WOOP WOOP.
Captain, people cant take much more of this shit. I'm giving it all shez got.
The alien Guspaz, with his corpulent fat face and fronds of flash drooping over belly into cheap assed keyboard try is coming. He farted on the left nacelle!
NO!!!!! That will massage his prostate, GUSPAZ likes anal pleasure, we must go to warp 69!
FAT SEXLESS GUSPAZ pursues the captain in a long brown skidmarking journey through space.
Fat fucking pig. Fat stupid. All Your Base Are Belong To Us was meant to be funny, its not the 11th commandment you dumb motherfucker.
FUCKING ASSHOLE ALARM.
You dont need to necessarily get the most expensive and popular package out there to make great art. The tool doens't make the artist. Case and point, a fellow by the name of Brian Taylor is making a short film on his PowerMac, called "RustBoy."
http://www.rustboy.com
http://www.apple.com/uk/creative/rustboy/
He's doing all of this using an inexpensive package called Metacreations Infini-D and good old Photoshop, just to prove that quality can be achieved on a shoestring budget.
Good luck,
Dustin